


Past the Point of No Return

by traptrixnepenthes



Category: Future Card Buddyfight
Genre: M/M, there's no character tags on this because it's bsically just tasuku thinking to himself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 12:24:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19173217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/traptrixnepenthes/pseuds/traptrixnepenthes
Summary: here's a quick sketch about tasuku falling in love.





	Past the Point of No Return

Tasuku had never been a particularly talkative person, even before he'd joined Kyoya's side and had fallen into all but voluntary muteness. He'd always been the type to let awkward silences fester instead of trying to break them, and was hardly the type to initiate conversation or even join in if it wasn't about the two things he cared about--work or card strategy. It was good fortune that many of the other people that Kyoya had gathered were equally silent, and even better that as long as Tasuku stayed silent and didn't respond, they eventually stopped bothering to try and talk to him at all.

The only one that kept bothering to try and keep an eye on him was Rouga, which made sense. Rouga, a criminal fighter who went by the name of Wolf, who seemed to be one of Kyoya's most prized assets, who treated his bond with Kyoya as something of a treasure, whose position as Kyoya's most useful tool had been usurped as soon as Tasuku had appeared. If he knew the person under the Purgatory Knight's mask was the officer that had been hunting him down for so long, Rouga probably would've done something drastic--but Tasuku never said anything, and Rouga didn't either. Not even a single word about the burning resentment that came from being replaced by a complete unknown. But where Rouga's virtues had come from being wild and untamed and vicious, Tasuku's came from training, efficiency, and effortless control. Sofia was too ruthless to be the only accompaniment on certain things, and so Tasuku came to adopt the position alongside her.

Sofia didn't care about who was under the armor, and for her part, she probably already knew even before Tasuku showed his face to her. For attending things with Kyoya, Tasuku's disguise was simply sweeping his hair back into a ponytail, a pair of square-framed glasses, and a set of grey color contact lenses that for the most part hid the natural color of his eyes, and that was enough to keep most people from looking at him too hard--people knew what Ryuuenji Tasuku looked like very well, and so all he needed to do was look just a little bit unlike that image. Hiding in plain sight, as it were, and as long as he lived in Gaen Tower along with Sofia and Rouga, he could keep away from Rouga's prying eyes and still fulfill the role that Kyoya had so generously given to him.

It was a gift, of course. Kyoya could call it a partnership or a friendship or whatever else he wanted, but Tasuku knew perfectly well that's not what their relationship was. Partnerships and friendships were supposed to be even things, and Kyoya was something like...a king. A god, maybe. Tasuku had thrown away every part of his life--his work, his school, his friends, his family, even his cards--in favor of the sweet words that Kyoya had worked into Tasuku's heart like a particularly sharp knife. It would be fair to say Kyoya was the very center of Tasuku's world now, and both of them knew it; it was in every aspect of how they interacted with each other.

Tasuku was, for lack of a better word, content with it.

He was also content with being Kyoya's unofficial second-in-command. If he hadn't been offered a role like that, one that was so close to Kyoya himself, he might've had to do something drastic with having his life forced away from him followed by his second life moving away from him too. Tasuku had never been one for the huge amounts of attention he got from people, and he enjoyed being a now mostly-anonymous face that simply appeared at Kyoya's side. The people Kyoya would see--adults in positions of power, who clearly resented having to bow their head to someone Kyoya's age--would ask who he was, and Kyoya's smile would curl his lips as he said simply, "My knight."

Tasuku didn't bother to answer for himself. What was there to say?

There was never anything to say. Not to the people that Kyoya met with, not to Sofia, and not even to Kyoya himself. If Kyoya talked to him then and only then would he respond, and even then his words were clipped and restrained, as if he didn't think he deserved to talk to someone whom surely he could call his savior. He didn't like to think about why he acted that way, and Kyoya never asked, so he didn't have to. The silence was refreshing.

His silence, his ultimate anonymous invisibility to the people around Kyoya, meant that he had as much time as he wanted to observe the habits of the center of his world.

Kyoya's voice when striking deals was not the same tender and gentle tone he'd used with Tasuku, but it was close. The sweet words that had brought Tasuku onto his side were not an exclusive thing, but he'd somehow expected that. Somehow, it still felt sad to see them as such a commodity that was handed out almost carelessly. Kyoya had a smile for everyone who came to him, but then, a smile didn't cost anything. His posture was always perfect, his shoulders back and chin lifted, but for Tasuku, who had acted much the same way, he recognized that as more of a defense. To appear less than perfectly composed was to be a sign of weakness, after all. But for everyone else in the world, if they saw the calculated elegance and grace with which he carried himself, they thought he was looking down on them, and presumably, Kyoya liked it that way. To the rest of the world, he was the protagonist, the star of the show always illuminated by a shining spotlight, and all the rest of them were simply background characters trying desperately to upstage him.

After meetings, sometimes Tasuku would see Kyoya sigh softly as his shoulders that had so many burdens to bear sagged a little bit, and he said nothing to him in that brief moment of weakness. What could he say?

Among their fellows, Kyoya preached of a peaceful and just world, and how he would lead them to it. To almost everyone but Tasuku, the words and ideals meant nothing. Some of them were just happy to have an excuse to run wild. The others were content knowing that Kyoya wanted them. Tasuku, and Tasuku alone, was the only one who cared what those ideals would lead to, and he was the only one who'd been working towards that ideal world even before Kyoya had come into his life. Looking at the others, it showed. Surely Kyoya knew that his ideals were wasted on the people before him, but he continued down his chosen path anyways. And still, Tasuku said nothing to him.

He didn't know what to say. Kyoya was, in many ways, everything that Tasuku had wanted to be--perfect in his confidence and elegance, single-minded in his pursuit to his final end goal, and respected at even the very bare minimum. But those moments of weakness that Tasuku watched Sofia avert her eyes from, the gentle impersonality in every gesture he made, and the walls he built with carefully picked words were all very familiar to Tasuku--they were all things he'd done, too. Perhaps that was why it had been so easy for Kyoya to pick the exact words that had shaken Tasuku enough to join him without a second thought.

Tasuku wondered what words he could say to Kyoya that would cut all the way into his heart in just the same way.


End file.
